BlackBerry plans to invest $100 million in a new autonomous vehicle-testing hub over several years, the company’s chief executive said on Monday, marking a change of direction for the smartphone pioneer.

“Most of all the money will go to jobs,” John Chen told reporters at an event opening the Ottawa-area facility.

The company, which is racing to increase its software revenue as its handset unit and related legacy service access fees shrink, hopes to make itself an indispensable, under-the-hood piece of the automotive industry’s weaponry in the self-driving vehicle arms race.

BlackBerry said it will work with middleware supplier PolySync and semiconductor company Renesas Electronics Corp , as well as its hometown University of Waterloo, to build an autonomous concept vehicle.

While the embedded operating system market is likely to grow quickly as autonomous driving takes off, BlackBerry faces numerous competitive threats, including from independent embedded operating system producer Green Hills Software as well as chipmakers such as Intel Corp.

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It must also convince system integrators including former QNX owner Harman International Industries Inc that its offering is compelling.